Sociality’s impact on well-being: Humans are social animals who are dependent on social contact with others for continued survival and optimal mental well-being. Not only do people aid one another in finding food, building shelters and insuring protection, but they are able to have a far more subtle impact on each other’s physiological & psychological health (Coan et al., 2006). Social baseline theory suggests that the ecology that humans are adapted to live within is “rich” with other humans, thus stating that human sociality is central to our nature (Beckes & Coan, 2011). Being isolated is a large threat to people because lone survival is costly in terms of energy and resource expenditure. The concept of load sharing, which states that people see other people as resources that can help them survive, is central to our understanding of social psychology (Beckes & Coan, 2011) and explains why humans seek to others. Even **ones** physiological health can be affected by **ones** lack of a social network. Studies show that people who lack social connectivity with others are more prone to die after a heart attack and are more prone to infections and cancer due to isolation making people more reactive to stress (Becke & Coan, 2011). The protective effect of sociality on physical health is known as the Buffering Hypothesis (Thoits, 1986). **HIJ here I would expect an overview - now I see this, I doubt that the other paragraph was your introductory paragraph** Thermoregulation: **HIJ there needs to be some kind of transition here.**Other than external aid that social beings offer one another, social contact is also able to metabolically influence our bodies functioning in positive ways via resource management (Beckes & Coan, 2011). Thermoregulation, which is the regulation of our temperature, is one such feature. Social exposure is able to regulated our temperature (Ijzerman et al, 2015), which is crucial since body temperature needs to be kept at optimal temperatures in order to survive. Many environmental and internal triggers are able to increase and decrease our temperature, and it is very important that we are able to return to our base line temperature. Humans can self-regulate their temperature; however, this is a highly costly and therein risky behavior since it exhausts our limited resources (Becke & Coan, 2011). As mentioned by Ijzerman etl al. (2015) social proximity and contact between people are able to regulate our temperature for us. For children, strong links have been made between the transfers of mothers’ body heat to their babies. For infants where soothing occurs but no skin-to-skin contact follows, children are more prone to experience **development** impairments since an optimal internal body temperature is thought to be crucial for their successful developmental progression (Ijzerman et al., 2015). This is a scenario where mothers do not help their baby **thermoregulation**, and instead the baby needs to regulate themselves, which is very costly to their energy resources. **(Some awkward phrasings)** Heats impact on interpersonal attitudes: Heat exchange between individuals is thought to be beneficial for altering our attitudes towards interpersonal relations. According to Uvnaes-Moberg (1998), physical contact with other people increases our release of oxytocin, which is able to alter our vasodilation and allow us to feel warmer and promotes feeling of trust towards others. However, in recently years even heat in people’s physical environments has been acknowledge as having the potential to impact people. Physical warmth in the environment of participants has shown to increases pro-social behavior, promotes interpersonal warmth and even has anti-depressant like effects (Raison et al., 2014). One may wonder if a positive association of warmth formed from prior exposure of thermoregulation with humans is responsible for such findings of positively altered interpersonal attitudes. In addition, a study by Williams and Bargh (2008) found that changing ambient temperatures via participants holding a warm or cold cup could impact participants perception of others interpersonal/ social warmth. Participants judged people as exuding more metaphorical “warmth” if they had been exposed to a warm environment (Williams and Bargh, 2008). Uni-polar Depression: lack of social contact The aforementioned hypothesized trend of ambient heat altering interpersonal attitudes will be explored in people with uni-polar depression. Uni polar depression impedes quality of life of patient (Cuijpers et al, 2011) due to various reasons, one of which is their tendencies to socially withdraw from others (Rice et al., 2011). The social withdrawal may transition patient towards isolation or social exclusion, which worsens their mental health since social exclusion is one of various stressful situations that has the potential of lowering one’s body temperature. There is evidence for that the thermosensory pathway, which most commonly regulate temperature and homeostatic functions, also influence depression and affective states due to its assumed link to emotional states (Raison et al., 2014). Furthermore, thermoregulation is proposed to be the basic functions that allows for intimacy, attachment and social emotional function to operate (Ijzerman et al., 2015). This begs the question of whether past positive associations made via thermoregulation can be re-elicited by the trigger of “heat”, and if this can educe depressive patients’ to experience those feelings of social bonding, which may influence their willingness to socially integrate. Strategies to treat asocial tendencies: Verbally priming patients with depression to reconnect with close kith is likely a discussed matter in interpersonal therapy. Interpersonal therapy is a form of treatment for people who are unipolar depressed that puts heavy focus on interpersonal functioning (Brunstein-Klomek et al., 2007). It assumes that clinical depression is grounded in social context and that the onset, **rehabilitation and outcomes** are influenced by ones social relations, specifically the relation to significant others (Brunstein-Klomek et al., 2007). A meta-analysis that aimed to examine the effect size of interpersonal therapy compared to no treatment found that the effect size was 0.63 (95% confidence interval [CI]=0.36 to 0.90) (Cuijpers et al., 2011). **Note: I know that Pim mostly attributes the bigger effect of interpersonal therapy to the higher quality of the studies, not the therapy itself** According to Ijzerman and Semin (2010), addressing similarities between oneself and a target person activates certain neural circuits that cause people to perceive their ambient environment as warmer. Due to their altered perception of a warmer surrounding it influences people to identifying more with the target individual and therein feel more socially connected to them. Moreover, work by Williams **& Barge** (2008) shows that physical warmer environments promote interpersonal warmth, thus supporting that assumption that heat in combination with interpersonal therapy will lead to better sociability with others. Such mental framing to induce positivity and change our physiology is seemingly helpful; however, would it be possible to implement psychiatric therapy that makes use of ambient (env) heat therapy to improve patient’s sociality with close kin and kith? **HIJ overall- a nice idea, but the structure of the piece is not entirely clear, and the specific predictions I cannot entirely extract from your introduction**